08-08-2025
She Made a List. The Ancestors Confirmed.
On Sept. 2, 2023, Jessica Sara Assaf grabbed her bags and left the Burning Man camp in the Nevada desert on foot after heavy rain stranded thousands of attendees there.
'I had this feeling that I needed to get back to my love,' said Ms. Assaf, referring to Dr. Dean William Prince, whom she had met two weeks earlier. 'Some people believe that gut feeling is your ancestors. The inner voice is so strong when you listen to it.'
She walked five miles barefoot through the mud until she reached a pickup point for a shuttle to Reno, Nev.
'I kept saying the Jews have done harder things,' said Ms. Assaf, who is Jewish.
Before heading to the airport, she stopped at Walmart to buy shoes. When she landed in Los Angeles, Dr. Prince picked her up from the airport and the two immediately began living together. At first, they stayed in hotels and Airbnbs that they rented for short periods. Then, that November, they moved into a rental apartment in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles.
'I couldn't get enough of her,' said Dr. Prince, a general surgeon with San Fernando Valley Cancer Center who practices at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles. 'There's just so much to know about this person. How can I get it all as fast as I can? I was 35, and you go through so much from a dating standpoint, so you know what you want at that age. I wasn't looking to play games.'
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